science

Orphanages Rival Foster Homes for Quality Child Care Orphanages linger in the popular imagination as unnatural relics, places from which neglected children need to be quickly rescued. And many international organizations and policymakers have made it a priority to reduce the role of these institutions, trying to place kids into family settings as quickly as possible. [More]
Post Date:12/17/2009 18:01:00
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Dark Matter Researchers Still in the Dark as Underground Search Returns Uncertain Results A hotly anticipated announcement regarding a possible signature of dark matter delivered some grist for the physics mill Thursday but failed to produce the blockbuster result some had predicted. In a Webcast talk from Stanford University, Jodi Cooley , a particle physicist at Southern Methodist University, presented the latest results from the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search 2 (CDMS-2) , a series of detectors buried deep underground in a former iron mine in northern Minnesota. (The first CDMS experiment was located at Stanford, much closer to the surface.) CDMS-2, she said, detected two signals that fit the bill for the passage of dark matter particles, but other possibilities could not be ruled out. [More]
Post Date:12/17/2009 18:00:00
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Progress gives climate deal hope A deal at the UN climate summit looks more likely after a frantic day of diplomacy, as China offers to make concessions.
Post Date:12/17/2009 12:35:33
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Humans feasting on grains for at least 100,000 years Grains might have been an important part of human diets much further back in our history than previous research has suggested. [More]
Post Date:12/17/2009 12:01:00
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Earth's Upper Atmosphere Cooling Dramatically New research shows that the outermost layer of the atmosphere will lose 3 percent of its density over the coming decade, a sign of the far-reaching impacts of greenhouse gas emissions. As the density declines, orbiting satellites experience less drag. Credit:
Post Date:12/17/2009 12:00:00
coolsciencenews.blogspot.com

Growing Up: Skyscraper Farms Seen as a Way to Produce Food Locally--And Cut Greenhouse Emissions Dear EarthTalk: What is "vertical farming" and how is it better for the environment? --Jonathan Salzman, New York City [More]
Post Date:12/17/2009 11:00:00
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Trying to keep Rudolph, and his fellow reindeer, from going down in history Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. But if we're not careful, his reindeer could soon be nothing more than a myth. [More]
Post Date:12/17/2009 10:02:00
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A Global 'Planetary Skin' Network Will Monitor Earth's Resources Planetary Skin Satellites join forces with drones and surface sensors to monitor the Earth NASA/Cisco From Popular Science:NASA and Cisco officially launch a $100 million effort to integrate ground, sea, air and space sensors. Every day, farmers and legislators make billions of small- and large-scale decisions that affect the Earth's resources, and typically rely on thousands of fragmented sources of data. Now NASA has joined tech firm Cisco in creating a $100 million "Planetary Skin" that would integrate all the Earth data from satellites, aerial drones and ground sensors, and put it in the hands of any decisionmakers who need it.Read more ....
Post Date:12/17/2009 10:00:00
coolsciencenews.blogspot.com

It was the sun after all Russ Steele New measurements from a NASA satellite show a dramatic cooling in the upper atmosphere that correlates with the declining phase of the current solar cycle. For the first time, researchers can show a timely link between the Sun...
Post Date:12/17/2009 08:25:38
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Smaller Fingers Mean More Sensitive Fingertips Smaller can sometimes be better, at least when it comes to fingers. It turns out that people with smaller fingers have more sensitive fingertips, according to a study in the Journal of Neuroscience . [More]
Post Date:12/17/2009 06:24:08
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5 Future Fuels That Could Save The World From Global Warming Global warming threatens to change the entire world as we know it, but these alternative fuels could significantly slow down the entire process.(thanks Danny) The Presurfer
Post Date:12/17/2009 01:01:00
presurfer.blogspot.com

We Laugh Because it is Funny but also Because it is True: The Weakness of the Historical Method This amusing videoclip makes the same point that my
Post Date:12/16/2009 22:17:15
zenpundit.com

SciAm 's 2009 Gadget Guide: 10 Tech Toys You Deserve after a Tough Year [Slide Show] After a long year of belt tightening perhaps the time has come to reflect on all that you missed out on in 2009 and add some last-minute items to your holiday wish list. Although this year's Scientific American gadget guide features some pricey technology, such as a $1,100 dual-screen notebook computer, it also includes some practical and budget-conscious low-tech solutions that could help you resurrect water-damaged electronics, keep closer tabs on your electricity consumption, and warm your hands after you turn down the thermostat a bit. [More]
Post Date:12/16/2009 14:38:00
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Wipe or Wash? Do Bidets Save Forest and Water Resources? Dear EarthTalk: Wouldn't a return to installing bidets in bathrooms at home go a long way toward cutting disposable tissue use and saving forests? --Peter K., Albany, Ga. [More]
Post Date:12/16/2009 11:00:00
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Diarrhoea and Aids for Christmas Last year I ran into Ariane Sherine. She had found that no charity would publicly take money from a book written by atheists at Christmas, since Christians give so much money for good work, and they didn?t want to annoy them. Luckily the Terence Higgins Trust stepped up to this bizarre challenge, which is [...]
Post Date:12/16/2009 09:33:42
www.badscience.net

Looking for Life in the Multiverse The typical Hollywood action hero skirts death for a living. Time and again, scores of bad guys shoot at him from multiple directions but miss by a hair. Cars explode just a fraction of a second too late for the fireball to catch him before he finds cover. And friends come to the rescue just before a villain’s knife slits his throat. If any one of those things happened just a little differently, the hero would be hasta la vista, baby . Yet even if we have not seen the movie before, something tells us that he will make it to the end in one piece.In some respects, the story of our universe resembles a Hollywood action movie. Several physicists have argued that a slight change to one of the laws of physics would cause some disaster that would disrupt the normal evolution of the universe and make our existence impossible. For example, if the strong nuclear force that binds together atomic nuclei had been slightly stronger or weaker, stars would have forged very little of the carbon
Post Date:12/16/2009 09:01:00
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Life Quest: Could Parallel Universes Be Congenial to Life? After more than 40 years that included five long-running TV series (even an animated version) and a string of movies, the writers of the latest Star Trek blockbuster in theaters decided to move to a new universe--one that has created fresh opportunities for stories and the chance to modernize and update the franchise. In the movie last summer Kirk, Spock and the rest of the gang were back. But a critical change--a time-jumping, revenge-seeking mad­man who caused the death of Kirk’s father and then destroyed the planet Vulcan--shattered the well-trod timeline of events that longtime fans have come to know so well.Many Star Trek fans, old and new, like the new, parallel universe, which is intriguingly darker and gives beloved characters and the too-good-to-be-interesting Starfleet a helpful kick-start for future movies. One thing that struck me, however, was how similar the two universes actually were, aside from the cataclysms that brought forth the new timeline. They had
Post Date:12/16/2009 09:00:00
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Return 2 Green & Bio Green Bags to Invest RM 120 Million Over 3 Years more...
Post Date:12/16/2009 06:27:00
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It's not moral being green Slate has a fascinating article this morning about how acting "green" may lead people to behave less morally.The article describes results from a set of two-stage experiments that examined how exposure to green items and the purchase of green items affected subsequent "moral" behavior. In first stage of the "exposure" experiment, subjects were asked to evaluate items from a hypothetical on-line store. In this set-up, subjects were randomly assigned to stores that varied in the number of green and conventional goods that they carried. In the first stage of the "purchase" experiment, subjects were also randomly assigned to stores with different numbers of green goods but tasked with making purchases from the assigned store.In the second stage of each experiment, subjects then played a dictator game in which they were given a small amount of money to allocate anonymously between themselves and somebody else. In these games, the amount of money that a subject gives to someone else is a sig
Post Date:12/08/2009 05:51:00
appliedrationality.blogspot.com

Schools slated for closure -- resulting from the failure of the administration's policies The DOE announced yesterday that they intend to close four schools, with more such announcements expected in the near future. (The Mayor recently announced he would like to close 10% of all NYC schools over the next four years ? which would mean more than 35 a year.) Yet the low performance of these schools signals the ongoing failure of the administration's educational policies.The schools targeted for closure include William H. Maxwell CTE (Vocational) HS; a school that has been flooded with high needs student for many years. Last year Maxwell was at 94% utilization; not long ago it was the most overcrowded high school in NYC. It has target cap of 1055 ? which was raised from 722 originally -- so you can see how overcrowded it really is.From Inside Schools:An Oct. 4, 2004 Daily News article by Elizabeth Hays details the severe overcrowding at Maxwell. In the article, Ms. Hays refers to Maxwell as "Sardine High" and notes: "the former all-girls technical school in East New York is the
Post Date:12/03/2009 12:53:00
nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com